In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt launched one of the most ambitious conservation and employment programs in American history: the Civilian Conservation Corps. Known affectionately as Roosevelt's Tree Army, the CCC put roughly three million young men to work planting trees, building trails, fighting fires, and constructing the infrastructure that still defines America's public lands today. It was born from desperation but became one of the most beloved and enduring legacies of the New Deal era. The program emerged from the collision of two crises. The Great Depression had left a quarter of the American workforce unemployed, with young men particularly hard hit and increasingly desperate. Simultaneously, decades of reckless logging, overgrazing, and poor land management had left vast stretches of the American landscape eroded, deforested, and ecologically ...